rally made us anxious to start the new
company. We were doing fairly well as a firm and personally, and with
our mastery of the business it was but natural that we should enlarge
rather than restrict our operations. There had been no decrease of the
foreign capital, principally Scotch and English, for investment in
ranges and cattle in the West during the summer just past, and it was
contrary to the policy of Hunter, Anthony & Co. to take a backward
step. The frenzy for organizing cattle companies was on with a fury,
and half-breed Indians and squaw-men, with rights on reservations,
were in demand as partners in business or as managers of cattle
syndicates.

An amusing situation developed during the summer of 1881 at Dodge. The
Texas drovers formed a social club and rented and furnished quarters,
which immediately became the rendezvous of the wayfaring mavericks.
Cigars and refreshments were added, social games introduced, and in
burlesque of the general craze of organizing stock companies to engage
in cattle ranching, our club adopted the name of The Juan-Jinglero
Cattle Company, Limited. The capital stock was placed at five million,
full-paid and non-assessable, with John T. Lytle as treasurer, E.G.
Head as secretary, Jess Pressnall as attorney, Captain E.G. Millet as
fiscal agent for placing the stock, and a dozen leading drovers as
vice-presidents, while the presidency fell to me. We used the best
of printed stationery, and all the papers of Kansas City and Omaha
innocently took it up and gave the new cattle company the widest
publicity. The promoters of the club intended it as a joke, but the
prominence of its officers fooled the outside public, and applications
began to pour in to secure stock in the new company. No explanation
was offered, but all applications were courteously refused, on the
ground that the capital was already over-subscribed. All members were
freely using the club stationery, thus daily advertising us far and
wide, while no end of jokes were indulged in at the expense of the
burlesque company. For instance, Major Seth Mabry left word at the
club to forward his mail to Kansas City, care of Armour's Bank, as he
expected to be away from Dodge for a week. No sooner had he gone than
every member of the club wrote him a letter, in care of that popular
bank, addressing him as first vice-president and director of The
Juan-Jinglero Cattle Company. While attending to business Major Mabry
was hourly hono